“Acting Victorian”

Contributor Noelle Hedgcock examines the tension the studios create when they market the stars of their prestige pictures—Betty Davis, Joan Crawford, Evelyn Venable, and Joan Fontaine, as "authentically-Victorian" even as the women themselves are demonstrating characteristics of an emerging class of modern women. The studio's mixed strategies result in an ideological strain that underscores the mediated nature of the “New Woman” in mid-twentieth century Hollywood and the United States. Images of the “New Woman” could circulate, but only when set in very specific conditions. Hedgcock's insightful analysis shows the studios allowed the “New Woman” to appear as a rich, young woman in an urban setting, but not in small-town, middle-class, conservative America. In this way, Hedgcock suggests, the studios appeal to the aspirations and anxieties of womanhood found in their audiences, but only if they also left space for their stars to fit the less sophisticated notions of womanhood.